Mailbag

Writer’s attitude is just sour grapes

I’ve often wondered why some people use only sarcasm when they want to criticize others. I’ve suspected it was because they’re stuck back in junior high school, and never took that class in high school that would have taught them that sarcasm is the tool of a weak mind.

Richard J. Tafilaw brought this thought to me again when I saw his juvenile piece, “Pool and spa owners needed a voice,” in the May 16 Mailbag. He spent around 200 words in his back-handed way trying to tell us, using a lot of exaggerated conclusions and no figures or facts, that swimming pool owners are bad, bad people.

But then, I got to his last 30 or so words and was able to see why, in addition to a lack of critical thinking, he always writes with sarcasm. It’s all he can do. We learned who he really is in his last few words when he showed us his true complaint about pool users. It has nothing to do with evaporating water. It’s that the pool and spa owners “keep us awake all night with their…incessant partying [and] earth-shaking splashes…[and] the fact they never even invite us over to take a dip.”

He has such a sour attitude because he is overflowing with envy and sour grapes.

ROBERT PHIPPS

Burbank

Drought debate is simply hogwash

How amusing to see Saturday’s community forum morphed into a venue showcasing an off-key chorus from the Golonski Squad. As the quartet hammered and vilified Councilman David Gordon, each also blindly accepted the specious, loudly trumpeted and non-existent “drought” in the Golden State as fact.

Truth to tell, there is no water shortage, only federally imposed constraints on its delivery, and when Dr. Gordon underscored that fact, even King David (Golonski) reluctantly downgraded his assessment of the situation from “dire” to “fairly dire” — a superbly ludicrous turn of a phrase.